Life Stories

I can remember as a boy, standing next to my grandfather in church and being a little embarrassed because his voice would boom out louder than anyone else’s when we sang hymns. And when we prayed, he would turn around and kneel on one knee facing the pew and fill the silence all around with ‘amen’s’ and ‘hallelujah’s’. At the time I used to think his behaviour was a bit odd because no one else did what he did. Now as a man, I love the memory of it because I know my Grandfather loved his Lord.    

As a boy I also used to love hearing stories from both of my grandfathers. One Grandfather, my Little Grandpa… would tell me stories about being a Salvation Army officer in the days before most people had cars…

One day he was riding down the street in his horse and sulky, when suddenly heard a voice say, “Stop and visit that house across the street !” Now my Grandfather looked about for the voice and saw no one. Then my grandfather looked across the street and didn’t recognize the house, so he went to move the horse on again.

Again he heard the voice say, “Go to that house across the street”. Little Grandpa said it was then that he realised, it was the Holy Spirit who was speaking to him… so he went. And sure enough there was a widowed woman and her family who were in great need. And my Grandfather was able to help that family. My Little Grandpa said the Holy Spirit often used to prompt him to do such things.

Then I also had a Big Grandpa. Now Big Grandpa used to tell me stories about being an Salvation Army Officer during the Great Depression. One the things that made me laugh & laugh was him describing how he used to have to use strips of old War Crys as toilet paper. Then he would get serious. He would say, “In those days we used to have to pay all the church bills before I could draw my pay. Often there wasn’t enough money, and sometimes we would run out of food”. And I would say, “What did you do Grandpa?” And he would say, “We prayed and God provided the food we needed”.

Sometimes a lady from the church would come to the door and say, “I was just doing some baking and I thought of your family”. Or, another would come and say, “I was down at the butcher and I thought I should buy another leg of lamb”. Occasionally whole boxes of groceries would appear – anonymously – on the back doorstep. My Big Grandpa would always finish with, “God is always faithful !”

As an adult I find these stories from my grandparents becoming more & more important to me. I find these stories are wonderfully centering. They say, ‘this where you have come from & this is who you are’. Sometimes they even say, “This is what you must do !”

It’s interesting… as my relationship with the Scriptures develops there is also now a number of passages & stories that resonate strongly within me. And from time to time I like to check in with them to see how I am doing. They are stories that anchor me, stories that say, “God is always faithful” & this is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Outwards & downwards…

Consuming Fire

Openness… I usually have a sense of openness as being an attitude of quietness. The idea is that if I am still and attentive for long enough in my spirit, I can begin perceiving God’s reality more as it is. But what about openness as ‘the enflaming’, the quickening, in the sense of the physical & spiritual person being overwhelmed by God’s holiness… like in Acts 1 ?

It says the disciples were gathered together in ‘the room upstairs’. They were ‘constantly devoting themselves to prayer together’… “And suddenly from heaven there came… the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house… divided tongues of fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them… All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.”

This sounds like an experience of spiritual ecstasy, of one’s whole being quivering with the awareness of the presence of God.

Martin Buber says, “to the man in ecstasy the habitual is eternally new.” He illustrates with the example of the zaddik – a holy man -  who stands at the window in the early hours of the sun dawning. Weeping, he says, “A few hours ago it was night and now it is day – God brings up the day !” And he is full of fear & trembling. The zaddik also says, “Every person should be ashamed before the Creator: were they perfect as they were destined to be, then they would be astonished & awakened & enflamed because of their renewal… at each time and in each moment”. 

This kind of openness reminds me of Jeremiah when he says, “I will not mention Him or speak anymore in His name, then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones. I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.” (Jer20:9)

There is nothing passive or particularly reflective about this kind of openness. It is demanding like the Sermon on the Mount where the receiving is in the asking and the finding is in the searching and the opening is in the knocking. The only thing that is certain is an experience of living with the volume turned right up… moment by moment !

Feeling The Weight of the World

Recently I came across Peter Rollins*  telling a yarn he calls, ‘The Parable of the 2 Camels’. It goes like this…

‘Once there was a merchant who was leading his two camels along a road. One camel was walking slowly because it was weighed down with packs of salt. The other camel moved along much quicker because it was loaded up with bales of cotton’.

‘Now along the way, the merchant came to a place where the road was flooded by a swollen river. As the merchant moved further along the road both he & his camels began being immersed deeper & deeper into the water’.

‘After a few minutes the merchant was swimming & the camels were almost completely submerged. But the merchant persisted. His livelihood depended on it.  Finally the merchant and his camels were back on dry road’.

‘As the merchant made the final trek to the bazaar, he noticed something had changed in the way the camels were carrying their cargo. The camel with the salt on it’s back seemed to have gained new strength & vigor. The merchant puzzled over this for a bit and then realised the water must have mostly dissolved the salt in the packs. However, the camel carrying the cotton was now struggling and groaning under the weight of its load. This was because the cotton had absorbed so much water’.

I like the parable of the two camels. I like it because it makes really clear a holy paradox that exists for people who embrace the Gospel.

I keep finding that whenever I encounter a paradox in Scripture, I need to pay attention because I have arrived at a place of significant spiritual truth. The way forward is not to decide between one possibility or the other but to try to a find way to hold the two in tension. These are places of tremendous spiritual dynamism.

The paradox of embracing the Gospel begins, when like the camel weighed down with the salt, we experience the river of God’s Grace. The mercy of God surrounds us & overwhelms us. We leave the weight and guilt of all our past selfish actions at the foot of the Cross. Our sins are washed away & we emerge on the other side with an incredible lightness of being that floods our very souls. It’s like the old hymn says, ‘My chains fell off, my heart was freed, I rose went forth and I followed Thee’.

This is the grace of the kingdom. This is forgiveness that makes us whiter than snow. This is love expressed as mercy… like being given a 2^nd, a 3^rd and a 4^th chance all at once.

Now the journey of discipleship is one where we keep following in the way of Jesus. So with that incredible lightness of being we enter back into the river – we continue embracing the Gospel with arms wide open. It is at this point that we experience the paradox. We begin to indentify with the experience of the camel who enters into the river with the cotton.

The more that we enter into and embrace the heart of the Gospel, the more we become weighed down with feeling the burden of a hurting world. 

I was talking to someone recently, asking them what their response has been to me talking for nearly 12 months now about mission. This person whose opinion I value said, “I feel exhausted !”

At first I found these words rather confronting. I started feeling a little bit anxious. Then this week as I have been reflecting on ‘The Parable of the 2 Camels’, I have been thinking maybe what my friend has been feeling, is a renewed sense of the weight of the Gospel.

You see, when we feel the weight of the Gospel, at first it can be overwhelming, even exhausting. Yet that burden we feel for a hurting world, that feeling of agitation, in the sense that I must… do… something… that’s not something I can claim credit for. That’s the Holy Spirit working.

This burden that we have for a hurting world, it changes our perception of the world we live in. It makes us see things that before were invisible. It makes us sensitive and aware of the needs of others… It opens us up to life lived beyond ourselves.

It moves us from being passive & selfish into merciful and inclusive action on behalf of others.

So how do you know a person is experiencing the paradox of embracing the Gospel with their arms wide open ?

Jesus says, “You will know them by their fruit”. He says, “Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles ? In the same way good trees bear good fruit… they cannot bear bad fruit”.

*from Peter Rollins’ book… ‘How (Not) To Speak of God’

What If Mission Came Home

Last Sunday evening I attended the commissioning of some friends who are preparing to serve in overseas mission. It was inspiring to here them speak with passion and honesty about their desire & intention to serve God in South East Asia. Their challenge came as a question, “How could we simply kick back into home renovation and career building when there are so many people who have yet to hear about Jesus right on our doorstep ?”

Over the last few weeks I have been reflecting on the question, “What happens when mission comes home?”  I have been seeking to challenge the idea that mission doesn’t just belong with the 1% of christians who leave their homes and travel to other lands where the Gospel isn’t. Mission and mission practices belong right here at home as well. Mission could be the organizing principle around which we re-orientate the whole church. Supporting missionaries in other cultures could be but one expression of our total mission vision.

I was reading back through the covenant that my wife & I made with our home church before we left for South East Asia in 2005. In that covenant we said the following,

“We identify the centrality of the missional task within our own lives as disciples of Jesus Christ. We reaffirm our desire to follow God where he leads and to be His witnesses & disciplers in those places. Through the Holy Spirit’s enabling we will seek to creatively evoke and to nurture the Gospel as a powerful & vital alternative to the dominant culture in which we will live. We renew our commitment to open our lives to otherness & difference so that we may authentically connect & participate in the lives of others”.

As a consequence of this statement we committed ourselves to a number of concrete practices. Firstly we committed ourselves to weakness that deliberately sort the role of a learner & a lifestyle of simplicity. Next we committed to listening & sensitivity that sort discernment from the Spirit of God, fluency in language learning & nonjudgmental insight into the cultural practices of the people with whom we will work. We committed ourselves to hospitality that sort to create nurturing & safe spaces where storytelling, discipling & worshipping communities could thrive. Next we committed to advocacy biased on behalf of poor and marginalised people that sort their participation in processes of reversal, empowerment, transformation, healing & reconciliation – so they could experience the presence of the Kingdom of God among them. Finally we committed ourselves to excellence in our professional roles.

As I read back through this list of concrete missional practices I find myself asking the question, “If we were prepared to commit ourselves to these things over there then why can’t we commit ourselves to those same practices back here in Australia ?”